Connecting the Dots for Fun and Profit

This reminds me of the guy who was working on World of Starcraft, that got brought to the Blizzard studios...Not sure what exactly happened to him after that, but I'm sure WoS will be out sometime in 2050.

In response to "A Mod-el for Success" from The Escapist forums:Mods can exist on consoles, or at least on the Wii. You just have to go through some hoops to use them. My personal favorite is Brawl Minus, a Smash Bros mod that changes the properties of the attacks to make everyone so overpowered there's a strange sense of balance. You can also download custom background music or even stage backgrounds, or custom skins for characters just for some laughs, like making Donkey Kong look like Gutsman or making Captain Falcon look like Jack from Madworld.

I can see the appeal of mods. But I also think there is a fine line between SUPPORTING your modding community (like Valve does) and RELYING on your modding community (in an age of digital patches, the fact that mods were needed to make Oblivion playable is almost inexcusable.)

BioWare has probably the most interesting modding community I've ever interacted with. KotOR and Jade Empire were actually a publisher response to Neverwinter Nights, which was considered TOO mod friendly. In fact, Neverwinter Nights is about 9 years old now, and still has an active mod community. The reason the modding was toned down was because the online network for Neverwinter Nights was doing things, without changing the core game, that BioWare wasn't aware was possible. The first expansion was a tough sale to Atari, because of the mod community.

It shows that with the right games, you can still makes sales, and find an active mod community.

And I hate Game Maker. Even scripting can frustrate me with its limits and the tutorials that are given aren't very clear. It just skips a lot of stuff! The latest version of Game Maker doesn't even have files anymore! CHAOS!